Historic: Challenge—The Woman in White

My baby is allergic (we think) to apricots. Fortunately, apricots aren’t a part of my regular diet—actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten a fresh apricot. But the baby has shown no other indication of allergies, which means my diet has basically remained the same while breastfeeding. I think it may have even expanded.

Some babies have more sensitive palates than mine, which means that their moms don’t always get to enjoy the good things in life—by which I mean, dairy products! It really pains me to think what I would do if I had to completely eliminate dairy from my diet. Milk is possibly my favorite beverage (behind Coca-Cola, another excellent source of nutrients); cheese is a mainstay of every meal. Oddly, I really hate butter in its native form—the thought of putting a big slab of butter on toast or a muffin absolutely grosses me out. But it’s fun to bake with!

Just because you can’t have dairy, you shouldn’t have to eliminate all the good foods, though. So the cupcake I have for you today is especially for breastfeeding moms out there whose babies are allergic to dairy and soy. 

This cupcake is my answer to a challenge from a friend whose baby is a few months younger than mine. Her specific request: use coconut oil instead of shortening, butter, or oil with soy in it. The result: a dairy-free, soy-free coconut cupcake with chai marshmallow frosting.  Continue reading →

Chocolates and Chili

chocolate-chili cupcakes

Cayenne and chilis generally don’t fall into my comfort food category, but a very dear friend asked for a chocolate-chili cupcake, and since she’s my friend, how could I refuse? (Also, we’re staying at their house while my husband does research, and it was their anniversary. But those don’t matter.)

Uncertain of the ratios of chocolate and chili powder/cayenne, I decided to make my life easier and go to my favorite place in Princeton: the Savory Spice Shop. They have a Mayan cocoa blend with the cocoa, cinnamon, and chili already apportioned.  Also they have vanilla beans. And Dutch-process cocoa. And they’re awesome.

I adapted my dark chocolate cake recipe, which I’ve already posted here, to make the cake. The cakes came out all right, but they weren’t my favorite. I think I may not have had enough acidity in the cakes to really let the chocolate shine.

Also, sadly, my experience with the spice shop’s spices was not my usual awesome one. The Mayan cocoa mix was grainy, which then made the cupcakes a little gritty. I assume it was the chili powder that was gritty, but I don’t know. Also, the vanilla beans I bought smell rancid. This makes me so sad, especially after I told the shop employee that the shop was my absolute favorite place to go to in Princeton and that it was way better than the spice shop in my area. :(

Anywho, all those things, in addition to some genuine recipe issues, contributed to a cake I’m not totally happy with. Then, when I remembered I needed to frost these dudes, we realized that there was no powdered sugar. Not to worry–I learned recently how to make Swiss meringue buttercream, which has no powdered sugar in it.

I decided to make a chocolate SMBC using my beautiful organic fair-trade dark chocolate bar from Trader Joe’s. Everything went great until I started to whip my meringue. I whipped and whipped.  And whipped and whipped. And whipped. And whipped. (Bear in mind I’m using a hand mixer for this process. It’s loud; it’s unwieldy; it’s loud.)

Well, 16 minutes into whipping, it wasn’t peaking. I decided to cut my losses and just use it. I mixed in my butter and chocolate, and it tasted good, just not stiff. So I just used a spatula to spread it, rather than piping it. Oh well.

It occurred to me later that it was almost certain that the humidity had killed my meringue. Oh well. At least it tasted decent.

The moral of this tale is this: these cupcakes need some work. I’m putting off naming them until I’m really happy with the final product–feel free to suggest names in the comments. (I already have a name in mind, but perhaps I’ll hear a better one! Remember that the person has to be American.)

Historic: To the Shores of Tripoli

William Eaton, portrait by Rembrandt Peale

William Eaton, a soldier in the US Army, held the post of consul to Tunis from 1797 to 1803. The United States had no real ambassadors as yet, but if anyone helped to create a foreign policy surrounding Tunis and the other Barbary States, Eaton was the man. From helping to negotiate tribute exchanges to assisting in the attempted overthrow of a monarch, Eaton left his mark on the region.

Eaton’s most well-known accomplishment was leading the United States into the Battle of Derne, in which the fledgling U.S. Marine Corps assisted in the overthrow of the pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli. It was the first time the Marines had captured a foreign city. This event was, of course, the inspiration for the opening line of the Marine Hymn, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” (Unfortunately, Eaton didn’t leave well enough alone and thus lost some credibility amongst both the Tripolitans and Americans.)

Though Eaton died young (42), he accomplished quite a lot for foreign policy in the United States. However, most people today have never heard of him, even the two PhD students in American history whom I asked about Eaton.

This cupcake is to help restore William Eaton’s legacy, both good and less good, both wise and less than wise. It’s a Mediterranean-inspired honey and olive oil spice cake, with dates and walnuts in the batter, frosted with a brown sugar meringue buttercream with some additional spices.

William Eaton

This was my first opportunity to make what Shirley Corriher (aka the Bakewise Lady) calls a high-ratio cake, where the sugar content and fat content are higher than in a standard lean cake. I thought the cake would be dense, but no, it’s as light and fluffy as ever. The texture when the cakes were first out of the oven wasn’t as smooth and velvety as I like; I used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour, so I think that might be the difference. Also, next time I’ll probably use more honey in the balance—this time I had a mix of honey and white sugar.

I also tried a meringue-type buttercream frosting for the first time, no mean feat for a little hand mixer. It actually wasn’t as tiring for my hand as I expected, although I did halve the recipe and I think it took less time to get to the meringue state as a result. I added some cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice to give it a little flair.

The most impressive thing about the brown sugar buttercream (thanks, Martha Stewart) was the crisp edges on the piping. That stuff was smooth and crisp. It was quite amazing. I also garnished the top with some toasted walnuts.

William Eaton

The cupcake as a whole didn’t have quite the Mediterranean flair I was going for—any suggestions for how to amp up the flavor? The independent reviewers liked the nutty flavor (although I will toast the nuts the next time) and the silky frosting.

Historic: Alexander Hamilton

Closeup of Alexander Hamilton

Since the beginning of this cupcake adventure, I’ve been a little nervous about making a chocolate cupcake. Chocolate is notoriously finicky, and if it goes wrong, it can go really really wrong. But using a complicated and indecipherable thought process, I decided that today was the day.

I try hard to use ingredients I already have on hand to make my cupcakes, but this time I purchased my cocoa just for this project, because I wanted a special product: Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa, which is a mix of regular and Dutch-process cocoa. It was amazingly dark; the batter was almost black. It also created a cupcake that was really dark-looking (which is what I was going for).

To offset the darkness of the cupcake, I paired it with a light Minneola tangelo cream cheese frosting. Next time I might amp up the orange taste a little, but it is still pretty tasty. Continue reading →

Dinner and a Party

This past week, we traveled to Greenville, SC, for several celebrations, primarily my sister’s graduation and my father’s wedding. And, of course, my major contribution was, along with my siblings, preparing food for Dad and Cindy’s rehearsal dinner.

We did a Tex-Mex theme, with Southwestern-inspired dishes. Andrew and Mel took care of the entree and several of the side dishes; my part was fruit salsa and cinnamon tortilla chips, a salad and, of course, the dessert: cupcakes!

We had fun getting everything ready, and by the end, I think we had a pretty good result. Here are a few photos from the event.

This event also inspired a new cupcake: the Susan B. Anthony, a buttermilk cupcake, filled with a blackberry coulis, frosted with lime cream cheese frosting. It was a hit at the rehearsal dinner, I think.

The Old Man and the Cake

Revision, as any good writer will tell you, is more than half the work of writing. So it is, sometimes, in baking.

I blogged several months ago about a triple citrus cupcake recipe that I had found from Spice Island spice company. I thought it was very good, and even planned it as part of my dad’s wedding rehearsal dinner. But after reading BakeWise, I discovered that the few things I didn’t like about the cupcake were actually issues with the recipe. So I got out the proverbial red pen and started slashing away.

(This action seemed almost arrogant–who am I to say that a published recipe from a respected food-service company is not good? But I did it anyway.)

When I had finished identifying the errors, it occurred to me that by the time I did all the math to correct the cupcake properly, I might as well just make my own. I decided to add a lemon curd filling, to amp up the citrus flavor, and to slightly alter my top-secret vanilla cupcake to make it orange-flavored instead. I did like the frosting of the original recipe, so I kept that.

The final result is super-citrusy, and, I think, worthy to be served at a festive occasion. Also, I got a Wilton 1M frosting tip this week–and it is glorious! It’s so much fun to frost cupcakes with this large tip. Plus, I think it looks nicer.

Since this refurbishment of an old recipe ended up as a totally different one, this new cupcake needed a name, something that evoked citrus, tartness, all that. I couldn’t think of anyone good, so I turned to the best place I knew for fresh ideas from real people: Facebook. And my FB friends came through.

Therefore, I’m happy to present (thanks to Sara and Phil) the Ernest Hemingway, an orange cake with lemon curd filling and lime buttercream frosting. Hemingway had strong ties to several historic citrus regions, among them Florida and Spain. Also, his writing can be kind of tart sometimes. :)

The Ernest Hemingway

Four frosting styles, one flavor

The overhead view of Ernest Hemingway

My other project for the past few weeks has been a new sweater for M to wear to her grandpa’s wedding. After several false starts, several false middles, and a false finish, it’s finally done. It’s the same pattern as the one I made for her for Easter, but with a different edging, and a lot more trouble (not sure why–it worked up perfectly the first time).

Lilac sweater

(The sleeve in this picture looks a little wonky–it’s just because of the hanger.)

 

Well, the wedding is this week, so look for a post early next week about how everything went!

Historic: Abigail Adams

Last Saturday, while we were in Boston, we decided to go to the fresh produce market that occurs every weekend at Haymarket. I got some raspberries, some corn, and on a whim, a pound of fresh ginger root.

I’ve never cooked with ginger before, but I decided that it needed to go into, what else?, a cupcake. Having never used the stuff, I embarked on an online quest to find out exactly how to use ginger, in what quantities, and with what complementary flavors.

The Internet was surprisingly silent on recipes with fresh ginger. I had already decided I didn’t want to do a gingerbread, whose main flavor is actually molasses, but I couldn’t find any baking recipes with fresh ginger that didn’t have a gingerbread feel to them. Finally a Google Books search revealed a lone cake, in a book by Maida Heatter, that used fresh ginger by itself. So it could be done! And if it had been done by Maida Heatter, it could be done well!

This assurance under my belt, I started formulating my recipe. This led to another crisis: how much of this stuff should one use in order to strike a balance of enough ginger taste, without too much? Well, once again the Internet was silent. So I just grated some up and hoped for the best.

On one subject the Internet was at least a little more forthcoming: several sites suggested blackberries as a good pairing for ginger. So it was decided.

I didn’t want a molasses taste, but I did want a little more richness to the flavor, so I used brown sugar instead of white, and sour cream instead of a buttermilk.

Also, you may remember from a previous post that I said I liked recipes that had whole eggs that didn’t need to be separated, because I was afraid of separating them. Well, I’ve been practicing, and I’ve actually gotten pretty good at getting a whole yolk all by itself. That’s good, because in order to balance this recipe properly, I had to use an egg yolk in addition to two whole eggs.

So, once again, it is my pleasure to present to you the Abigail Adams, a fresh ginger cake with blackberry filling and blackberry buttercream frosting. The cake itself isn’t super-sweet, so the frosting can be a little sweeter. However, I will say that neither the filling nor the frosting came out exactly like I wanted, so I’m going to give you just the cake recipe today, and later, when I’ve figured out how to correct my frosting and filling, I’ll let you have that too.

The Abigail Adams

Fresh Ginger Cakes
½ cup butter, room temp
1 c. packed brown sugar
¼ c. grated fresh ginger
2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
2 c. cake flour
2 ¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ c. sour cream

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl for at least 30 seconds.
3. In a separate large bowl, beat butter until creamy. Add brown sugar and ginger; cream until fluffy.
4. Add eggs and egg yolk one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. With mixer on lowest speed, add over half the flour mixture. Alternate flour and sour cream, ending with sour cream. Beat only until all ingredients are incorporated.
6. Fill cupcake liners ⅔ full (batter will be pretty thick). Bake at 350 degrees for 17-18 minutes or until a piece of uncooked linguine inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean. Cool in muffin pan for 1-2 minutes; remove cupcakes and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Ginger cakes ready for filling and frosting

 

I’m glad to be able to enrich the Internet with a non-gingerbread-y ginger cake, which I think tastes pretty good. A warning: if you taste the cupcakes straight out of the oven, they won’t taste very gingery. But by the time they’re cool enough to frost, they’ll have mellowed and the ginger will be much more apparent. Enjoy!